Australian Natural Disasters: Gundagai Flood of 1852

This blog contains the names and images of deceased .Wiradjuri and other First Nations people.

Australia’s harsh and varied climate has been responsible for many devastating natural disasters over the centuries. This series of articles, beginning with the Gundagai flood of 1852, will look at the devastating impact that these events have had on the people, and the place in which they lived.

The Gundagai flood of 24 June, 1852, remains the deadliest flood in Australia’s recorded European history. It is estimated that between 80 and 100 people were drowned from a population of about 250. With the chase for gold embracing New South Wales and Victoria at the time, it cannot be known how many travellers were camped on the banks of the Murrumbidgee River when the flood waters began to rise.

The catastrophic flood had a deep impact on colonial Australia, with contemporary reports, and recollections from years and decades later, describing scenes of horror, and the bravery of local Wiradjuri men who rescued many white settlers.

In the days after the flood, those who had survived bore witness to indescribable scenes. Corpses were stuck in the branches of trees and against the river bank; along the river-flat, the scattered debris of property and vegetation was covered in a slimy silt, that was occasionally broken by the limb of a deceased person: dead stock and other animals were scattered throughout the district.

Reverend F. Brigstocke would conduct 73 burials in one day.

Mr and Mrs McKennna of the National School were drowned with their five children, when the building collapsed under the strain of the flood waters. It was just one of the many tragedies that occurred on that June night in 1852.

This memorial cairn, on the Murrumbidgee flood plain at Gundagai, was built in 1977 at the site of the old National School, which was destroyed in the 1852 flood. The foundations of the building can be seen in the foreground. Photo: Michael Murphy.

The foundations of the National School building can still be seen today, just east of the old timber rail viaduct. A stone memorial cairn was erected in1977 to honour the memory of the McKennas, and all that perished in the flood.

It is certain that many more people would have perished during the flood of 1852 if it wasn’t for the skill and heroics of Indigenous (Wiradjuri) men, Jackey (Jacky or Jackey Jackey) and Yarri (Yarrie or Yarra).

As the flood waters rose to an eventual peak of 40 feet and six inches, Yarri and Jackey braved the surging and unpredictable waters to rescue settlers from a certain death.

There were also other people who entered the flood waters to rescue stranded people; their acts of bravery resulting in the loss of their own life. Henry Henshaw, a worker on Major Andrew’s Mount Kimo property, obtained one of the few small boats around, and along with another man, he attempted to row towards the stranded Turnbull family. Mrs Turnbull was the daughter of Major Andrews.

Tragically, Henshaw’s boat was caught in a whirpool caused by the flood waters. The boat was smashed against a tree, and while the second man was able to get to safety, Henshaw was drowned.

The heroics of Yarri and Jackey were widely praised in newspapers, but it wasn’t until 1875 that the two Wiradjuri men were formerly honoured. They received a lifetime pension and an engraved breast-plate.

In modern times, the two men have been honoured through education via schools and literature, while in 2017, on the 165^th anniversary of the flood, a striking bronze sculpture of Jackey and Yarri with a bark canoe was unveiled in a prominent position in Gundagai’s Sheridan Street.

Contemporary reports mention another Indigenous man by the name of Tommy Davis rescuing stranded settlers (see referenced material). Some have suggested that Tommy is in fact, Jackey, but in an interview many years later, Mr E. Perkins of Cooma speaks of an engraved breastplate presented to a Tommy Davis that Mr Perkins had in his possession. Jackey and Yarri are mentioned separately in the article. Recollections of any event can vary, and more work needs to be done on this particular topic.

While sometimes spaced by more than a decade, floods along the Murrumbidgee River were relatively common. Even in the short period of recorded Australian history there is a certain pattern to the flooding of the Murrumbidgee.

A bronze sculpture of the Wiradjuri men Yarri and Jackey (Jacky) was unveiled in 2017 in Gundagai's Sheridan St. Its prominent position, just above were flood waters often rise to in Gundagai, is a fitting tribute to their acts of bravery and skill. (Photo: Amy White).

The Wiradjuri people had lived on the land for tens of thousands of years and were accustomed to the natural environment; the signs that marked a coming flood, and the ferocity of those events.

In the days leading up to 24 June, 1852, the Wiradjuri were reportedly camped in their hundreds along the Murrumbidgee River near Gundagai. As the rain continued to fall in the area, the Indigenous men warned the white settlers of the coming danger, but as they broke camp to move to safer ground, the majority of settlers chose to ignore what the Indigenous people had said.

Apart from the persistent warnings of the Wiradjuri people, and even some of the white settlers, there was also recent experience of the destructive force of the local waterway.

Prior to the flood of 1852

When the explorer, Captain Charles Sturt, began his expedition to investigate the Lachlan-Murrumbidgee River Systems in November of 1829, the limit of white settlement was said to be in the region of present-day Gundagai.

Sturt rested and gathered supplies at Warby’s Station, which was located at Darbalara, at the junction of the Tumut and Murrumbidgee Rivers, but there was also Peter Stuckey’s run. He had reportedly crossed the Murrumbidgee in 1828 to settle at Willie Ploma, just south of Gundagai.

After Hamilton Hume and William Hovell had passed through the region in 1824 on their way to the south coast of mainland Australia, one of Sturt’s tasks on his expedition was to find the best crossing of the Murrumbidgee for drays and other wagons.

Sturt and his team made many crossings, but what would be considered the best, and the place where settlers would gather to cross, therefore encouraging trade to be established, would be ‘Stuckey’s Crossing,’ a short distance downstream from where the last remaining (driveable) section of the Prince Alfred Bridge stands today.

In December of 1832, naturalist, George Bennet listed the squatting runs in the Gundagai district, with William Hutchinsons ‘Gundagai Station’, added to the aforementioned, while in 1836 William Brodbribb (sic) established a squatting run with 1200 ewes that covered the eventual site of Gundagai.

Governor Burke’s new regulations of 1837, still had Gundagai outside the limits of settlement, but with buildings already being erected on the river-flat, Gundagai was gazetted as the ‘site’ of a township on 10 October 1838. Governor Gipps re-organised the districts beyond the limits, to include Gundagai as being in zone six of the Lachlan district.

On 12 August 1841, the first sale of town lots would take place.

The colonial government would eventually come under a lot of criticism for its planning of Gundagai, with one commentator stating that: “Gundagai had been built with, one might say, criminal want of foresight.”

This flood marker, on the banks of Morley's Creek at Sheridan Lane, just below the present site of Gundagai, indicates the peak of flood waters in Gundagai since 1852. (Photo: Michael Murphy)

Historically, there were grounds for the criticism, but the situation of Gundagai; the eventual establishment of Stuckey’s Crossing to aid travellers, and the founding of business and trade to accommodate the traffic, were chiefly motivated by practicality and commercial possibilities.

The flood of 1844, which claimed two lives, resulted in Commissioner Bingham writing to the NSW Colonial Secretary to suggest that part of the town be laid out on the higher ground of the south bank.

Bingham also suggested that settlers whose allotments were destroyed in the 1844 flood, be able to exchange their lot on the flat for one on higher ground. Governor Gipps agreed to laying out new allotments, but refused any form of compensation or exchange, with the governor being quoted as saying: “…what a man buys, he buys for better or worse.”

While the government’s refusal did leave the settlers with limited options, there was also a common belief amongst the Europeans that the “big-one” was behind them, and they would be unlikely to see the river rise any higher than it had.

This sentiment is evident with reports of people waiting inside of buildings confident that the flood waters of 1852 would subside and life would continue, as normal.

If there was an element of complacency within Gundagai in regards to the danger of floods, it was not an attitude based on recent events. The 1844 flood had claimed lives, but there were also people within the township during that flood who had the foresight to create, as one journalist described in a Sydney newspaper: “…a city of refuge,” on the slopes of Mt Parnassus in order to host people and store goods.

With a flood also occurring in 1848, which resulted in a significant loss of stock, why were so many people intent on waiting the flood out in 1852?

After the governments rejection of Bingham’s appeal on behalf of the Gundagai residents, a satirical verse was published in 1845, titled: The Watermen of Gundagai.

June 1852

During the early weeks of June, 1852, heavy rain had drenched much of south-eastern New South Wales; Penrith, Camden and Goulburn would also report flooding.

This photo from the Gundagai Flood of 1900 gives an indication of the water that flowed down the Murrumbidgee Flood Plain. The 1852 flood was two feet higher, and the buildings to the right were not there. The old mill in the centre of image (on Morley's Creek) was the only building to survive the 1852 flood to the modern day. The Murrumbidgee River runs several hundred metres to the left of this photo. (Photo: Charles Gabriel, courtesy of National Museum of Australia).

The ground was soddened, and gullies and creeks swelled, filling rivers like the Murrumbidgee, high up in its mountainous beginnings; where in drier times, an energetic youth could jump the waterway.

The town of Gundagai: a cluster of businesses, private dwellings and a National School that gathered around a punt, was also experiencing the winter downpour.

In 1902, Mr H. Turnbull, recalled the harrowing scenes of the 1852 flood in a newspaper interview.

Then a young man, he spoke about being cut off from high-ground by the river, Morley’s Creek and Jones’s Creek. He recalled how he and his family had scrambled to the roof of their house to get away from the rapidly rising flood waters, with only their night clothes to protect them from the elements. The Turnbulls spent two nights on the roof.; a half loaf of bread, snatched in desperation by his father before they hastily climbed from the attic onto the roof, the only sustenance for them.

At the time, his mother, Mrs Turnbull, was nursing an eight-day-old baby.

Mr Turnbull spoke of the horror of seeing dead bodies float past them, and the terrible cries for help from those that were still alive. In an almost surreal visage, the Turnbulls watched helplessly, as a woman clung for her life to a tree limb, only to be pawed across her back by the hooves of an equally desperate horse. The horse was swept away by the current.

The Turnbulls owed their lives to the skill and bravery of the Wiradjuri man, Jacky after other attempts to rescue them had failed. During 24-26 June, Indigenous men performed heroic tasks in navigating bark canoes across the raging flood waters to rescue many stranded people.

Not long after being rescued, the Turnbull’s home, and place of business, collapsed under the strain from the flood waters.

As mentioned earlier, white settlers also displayed their valour during the tragedy. A young man by the name of James Gormly had watched his father, mother and sibling drown in the torrent. He had managed to cling to a tree before making his way towards the south bank, where he was rescued, exhausted from his ordeal.

The following day, and with the flood-waters still higher than many floods before or since, Gormly was back at the scene to rescue others.

A publican by the name of Joe Morley made hurried repairs to a small boat to be used in the rescue. In a similar boat, of which there were few in the township, two travellers who had been on their way to the Victorian gold fields, rescued a man from a tree.

Having personally seen the Murrumbidgee flood at Gundagai in 2010 and 2012; the enormous amount of water that stretches across the plain, its varying direction of flow and sheer turbulence, it is astonishing to think that any individual could cross those waters in such a diminutive vessel, as those Wiradjuri men did, let-alone ferry people to safety.

Sir Charles Fitzroy, Governor of NSW, approved the exchange of land lots after the devastation of the 1852 flood. Governor Gipps had refused a similar request after the 1844 flood.

To illustrate some perspective, the flood of 1852 was over four and a half feet higher than the flood of 2012. In 1853, the Murrumbidgee would flood again, this time to a record high of 41ft and 4 inches, but by this time the vast majority of people were residing on the slopes of Mount Parnassus, the already established houses on the south bank, or in some other elevated position.

The colonial government of NSW, under intense public scrutiny, now agreed to exchange lots on the river flat for those on higher ground.

In the week after the flood, the horror of what had transpired became even more apparent, as the flood waters began to subside further. People were said to walk in an almost trance-like state looking for lost friends and relatives; the opposite poles of human nature illustrated in tragedy, as while some fed and comforted survivors who had lost everything, others, unscrupulous and known as “wreckers”, made away with personal property scattered by the flood waters.

A golden legend

The Turnbull’s had a lot to be thankful for after Jackey had rescued them from the roof of their store. Their business had been destroyed, but they were alive.

As mentioned, Gundagai was busy with travellers and gold prospectors at the time of the flood, and some of those prospectors were described in newspapers, as: ‘flash Californians’; miners, who had sailed across the Pacific Ocean from the gold diggings on the west coast of America.

The Californians were known not to accept bank notes, and would only deal in gold. To assist his trade, Mr Turnbull (senior to the Mr Turnbull mentioned earlier) had acquired some three-hundred gold sovereigns.

The shipment of gold had arrived from Yass the day before the flood, but they were lost when the flood waters rose, and are rumoured to be lying, in-cased in silt, at the bottom of Morley’s Creek.

Further reading and referenced material

Butcher, A. C., Gundagai: A Track Winding Back, 2002, Gundagai.

Flood at Gundagai, Empire (Sydney:1850-1875), 20 July, 1853, p.3.

Gibney, H. J., ‘Sturt, Charles (1795-1869), Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/sturt-charles-2712/text3811

Gundagai Flood, Adelong Argus, Tue 5 August, 1902.

Gundagai Flood: To the Editor of the Empire, Empire (Sydney, NSW: 1850-1875), 20 Sep, 1852.

Gundagai Flood, The Gundagai Times and Tumut, Adelong and Murrumbidgee District Advertiser (NSW: 1868-1931), 30 November, 1926, p. 2.

The Albury Banner and Wodonga Express, 18 June, 1915.

Gundagai Flood, National Museum of Australia, https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/gundagai-flood-1852

Lindley, David, Early Gundagai, T. Greensmith and Co., 2002.

Memory of 52’, The Gundagai Independent, 12 June, 1922, p.2.

News From the Interior, The Sydney Morning Herald (1842-1954), 17 June, 1848, p.3.

The Gundagai Flood, The Sunday Times (Sydney, NSW, 1895-1900), 5 August, 1906, p.9.

The Gundagai Times (NSW 1868-1931), 6 August, 1915, p.8.

The Monaro Mercury, and Cooma and Bombala Advertiser, 18 March, 1912, p.3. (Re: Tommy Davis).

The Sydney Morning Herald, 22 July, 1845, p.3.

The Tumut Advocate and farmers Settlers Adviser, 8 May, 1923, p. 4.

Thompson, E., Government Gazette, issue No. 106, Gundagai, October 1852, p. 1579.